


Overheard

by Jaxon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drugs, Explicit Language, Gen, HP AU, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Murder, Post-Canon, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12846624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaxon/pseuds/Jaxon
Summary: Azkaban is a prison, but not all prisons are Azkaban.





	Overheard

**Author's Note:**

> From a Tumblr prompt (see end).

“How?”

She’d been visiting him once a week for six months.  He was half amazed it had taken her this long to ask such a thing.  Still, he shook his head.  He didn’t know how to answer; didn’t quite know what she was asking of him. He wondered if even she knew.

“If I’m to get you out of here, you have to confide in me.”  She stared at him, her gaze fierce.  She was no longer the young slip of a girl who had sat in his class, her hand waving defiantly in the air.  She was older; much older – twenty-three, or twenty-seven, or Merlin forbid, thirty.  The days had blurred into one for longer than he dared admit.

He leant back in his seat, and then indicated to himself.  “How  _I_  am here,” he asked, “Or how I am  _here_?”  He punctuated his final sentence by tapping the table between them with his index finger.

“Both.”

“Always in the pursuit of knowledge, Granger,” he sneered.

“One will inevitably lead to the other,” she shot back, “so start with whichever’s easiest.”

There was a long pause.

“Start, Snape,” she hissed, her voice low.  “The Muggles will only permit me a short amount of time with you, as well you know.”

“And what if I have nothing to say?”

“Nothing to say at all, or nothing to say to me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Because I can request someone else from the Department, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“What’s bothering me is that you left me for dead,” he snapped back.

* * *

Next week, nobody came.

He paced his cell, anxiously waiting for his jailer to unlock the door – but nobody came.

* * *

After a month of silence, he wrote a letter to his solicitor.

* * *

A week later, he had a visitor.  Not her. It was a Hufflepuff.  A tall, slender, brown haired, brown eyed Hufflepuff. That’s all Severus could remember about him.  No hand waving.  No assisting Harry Potter.  No leaving him for dead.

“Why?”

“Fuck off.”

* * *

The next week, it was Draco. Draco Malfoy.  Severus laughed out loud as the door to the solitary visiting room opened, and the Muggle guard raised an eyebrow towards the finely dressed young man.

“It’s fine,” Draco drawled, ushering the man out of the room, and taking the seat opposite his old housemaster.

“Is it?”

“Father sends his regards.”

“He’d be better sending his money.”

“He sent me.”

Severus scoffed.

“You’ve upset Granger.”

Severus scoffed even more loudly.  “She upset me.”  He leant menacingly over the desk.  “She left me for dead, and now she thinks she cares!”

“Does she care?” Draco idly enquired, “or was she just doing her job?”

“You can fuck off as well.”

“I can fuck off so she can come back?”  Draco stared evenly at the older man, refusing to drop his gaze.  Then he nodded, satisfied.  “Thought so.  I’ll send her an owl.”

“You needn’t bother.”

“And you can stop that,” Draco said, indicating at Severus’ arm.  Instinctively, Severus tugged at his cuff, pulling the material to his wrist. “I already saw.  She already told me.”

* * *

“How did you live?”

He can’t believe it’s taken over two months to bring them back to this very same point.  He bites his tongue to prevent a pithy retort; he doesn’t want to go through it all again.  She might send a Gryffindor next time.  A Patil, or a Creevy, or a Longbottom.  He gave an involuntary shudder, and tugged at his sleeve.

“I survived.”

“I’d worked that out for myself.”

“No,” he said softly. “You asked me how I lived.  But I didn’t.  I survived.”

* * *

“You must’ve seen the charges,” he said, before she’d even sat down.  “You’re in here, asking me what I’m doing here, and you must’ve seen the charges.”

She nodded, still gripping the back of the chair.

“So you know what I’m doing here.”

“I know what you were imprisoned for,” she said.  “But I don’t know…”

He stared at her, unblinking.  “Don’t know…what?”

“A wise man once said that only fools wear their hearts on their sleeves,” she said, finally taking the seat opposite him.  Before he could move, she grasped his left arm in a pincer grip, undid his cuff and slid his shirt sleeve upwards.  Her soft fingertips brushed over his angry scars, old and new.  “And yet you do.”

He couldn’t bring himself to pull away.  He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him so.  That was a lie.  Of course he could.  It was Narcissa Malfoy – always Narcissa Malfoy – after one of the Dark Lord’s final meetings.

“Why?”

“Not how?  In here?  After all, it’s an achievement.”

“I wouldn’t call punishing yourself an achievement.”

“It’s not a punishment,” he hissed, yanking his arm away.  He should’ve known she wouldn’t understand.

* * *

“You were always so controlled,” she said, her pen clicking annoyingly against the desk.  “Meticulous.  Methodical.” She stopped clicking the pen.  “Why would you stab a Muggle?”

He shrugged.

She rifled through his case notes, and pulled out a typed page, and pushed it before him.

“That sheet doesn’t have the answer.  What was said that day…  They don’t know the half of it.”

“Then don’t shrug at me. Tell me.”

“You should already know.”

* * *

She tossed the photographs before him.

He stilled, his chest tightening, as he stared his victim full in the face.

“I get it now.”

“Take them away. Please.”

She paused, and then slid them into her bag.  “You saw  _him_ , didn’t you?”

* * *

“It wasn’t just that,” he said, loudly, before the door had even shut.  “I was out of my fucking tree, Granger.”

She moved across the room quickly, sensing he was finally in a talkative mood.  “Painkillers?”

“It started as painkillers,” he admitted.  “But it spiralled.  Potions. Drink.  Muggle drugs.  Anything I could get my hands on.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?!”

She recoiled from his anger, his breath hot on her face.  “So…diminished responsibility?”

His face tightened.  “It’s no justification.  I should’ve known better.”

“Should’ve known Albus Dumbledore wasn’t accosting you in an alley in broad daylight?”

“He was a grandfather,” he said, quietly.  “Eleven grandkids, they said.  Four children.  And me. An alcoholic, drug addicted mess who ruined their lives.”

“A war survivor suffering from injury and post traumatic stress.”

He huffed.

* * *

“He said something to you, didn’t he?”

“I was out of my mind.”

“What did he say?”

“You must return to him. He is where your heart truly lies.”

“And Dumbledore once said that?”

Severus nodded.

“Exactly that?”

* * *

She compared the notes from the trial.  “You should go back to him,” she read, from his granddaughter’s testimony.  “He loves you.”

He’d been on his mobile. An overheard, misconstrued conversation on the phone.  She leant back in her seat, mentally exhausted.  

* * *

“A pensieve?”  He scowled.  “How did you get that into here?”

She flashed her Ministry ID. “The same way we do most things.” She held her wand to his temple.  “You know what I want to see.”

The silver stand of memory attached itself to her wand, and she cast it into the basin.

* * *

She’d assembled five others; Harry, Ron, Minerva, Kingsley, and Lucius.  She didn’t know anyone else who knew either Severus or Dumbledore better.

“It didn’t happen like that!”

Minerva placed a soothing hand on Harry’s shoulder.  “He’s right, Hermione.  Albus asked if Severus was prepared.  He didn’t tell him that…”

“ _Riddle_ ,” Harry spat.

“-Riddle,” Minerva agreed, “was where his heart truly lay.”  She looked solemn.  “Of all of us, Albus was the most certain of all that Severus was his man.”

“Even the Dark Lord did not believe that Severus’ heart lay with him,” Lucius drawled, sounding every inch like his son.  “Indeed, I suspect the Dark Lord assumed Severus had no heart.”

Ron looked perturbed. “So why would he have such a twisted memory?  I thought you couldn’t mess with memories?”

“Drugs,” Kingsley said, simply.  “Mind altering, seizure inducing, brain cell depleting drugs.”  He straightened his robes.  “Take the Muggle liaison office with you next time.  I want him back here.”

* * *

“You,” she hissed, “are not part of the Muggle liaison office.”

“I am his best friend.”

“Some friend.”

“I might be able to help.”

“Money isn’t going to acquit him.  The Muggle world doesn’t work like that.”

Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose.  “He doesn’t need acquitting.  He needs a re-trial.  A backstory of a war veteran.  Medical records.  You said it yourself-”

“-diminished responsibility.”

Lucius nodded.  “How long has he served?”

“6 years and 4 months. 9 months on remand.”

“Over 7 years?  Then we’ll get him out,” he said, confidently.  “Now come.”

* * *

The Ministry had equipped her to accept the hypocritical, so she kept her comments to herself as she watched Lucius adeptly traversing the Muggle world.  He hired and fired with a zeal with which she was unaccustomed, but importantly, he got results.  She watched, with a smile, as Severus strode from the prison, flanked either side by a Malfoy.

* * *

Five years later, he looked her up.  Asked her out.  He was mildly – but pleasantly – surprised when she accepted.

“Is this how long a thank you takes in your world?” she quipped, as he pulled her seat out in the restaurant.

“No,” he said, passing her the menu.  “This is how long it takes to get sober.”

“Five years to become sober?”

He huffed a laugh.  “Sober took a year.  Sane took a little longer.”

“Interesting.  It takes just four years to overcome being a pawn for two warlords?”

He shrugged, but silently rolled up his sleeves, his arms littered with white – but not red – scars. “Four years is a tight timescale. I’d say it’s a work in progress.”

She raised her empty wine glass, and gave him a broad smile.  “I don’t think anyone could ask for more.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was: Severus goes to Muggle prison. SS/HG or SS&HG. I think Severus self harms so something that includes that, it doesn't destroy him, but it is or was part of him? Can he get past it?


End file.
